Football Player Asked If He Was Attracted To Men During NFL Combine

The NFL Scouting Combine is where teams can see prospective players in action, performing physical challenges and answering various questions in front of scouts, coaches and general managers. Sometimes, though, those questions can get a little too personal: Derrius Guice, a former running back at Louisiana State University, says he was asked if he liked men during one combine interview.

Guice said a rep from another NFL team asked if his mother was a prostitute.

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“It was pretty crazy,” Guice told SiriusXM’s Late Hits. “Some people are really trying to get in your head and test your reaction… I go in one room, and a team will ask me do I like men, just to see my reaction. I go in another room, they’ll try to bring up one of my family members or something and tell me, ’Hey, I heard your mom sells herself. How do you feel about that?'”

Guice said he was told to prepare to be asked some weird questions.

“It went exactly how everyone told me it would be,” he said. “It’s exhausting… You’re being watched and tested the whole time.”

An NFL spokesperson said the league was “looking into the matter.”

“A question such as that is completely inappropriate and wholly contrary to league workplace policies,” Brian McCarthy told USA Today. “The NFL and its clubs are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees in a manner that is consistent with our commitment to diversity and inclusion, state and federal laws and the CBA.”

DeMaurice Smith, director of the NFL Players Association, told PFT Live that whichever team asked Guice whether he liked men should be banned from the combine in the future. “The question is inappropriate. Questions along these lines are always inappropriate.”

After Michael Sam became the first openly gay player to join the NFL in 2014, some Combine prospectors worried another gay player may draw undue press attention. At the 2016 Combine, former Ohio State lineman Eli Apple was asked if he was gay by an assistant Falcons coach.

“It was like the first thing he asked me,” Apple recalled. It was weird.”